Kaspersky Lab Extends its VirtuOz Intelligent Virtual Agent Lena from Customer Support to the Sales Function

EMERYVILLE, CA – January 19, 2011 – VirtuOz, Inc., the leading provider of intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) for online marketing, sales, and support, today announced that Kaspersky Lab, a leading developer of secure content and threat management solutions, has extended the mission of Lena, its VirtuOz IVA, to online sales. By integrating Lena into its online retail operation, Kaspersky Lab can now provide personalized sales assistance to customers 24/7.

Originally implemented for customer support, Lena’s presence has delivered an 85 percent average customer support resolution rate, and decreased call center inquires and emails by 22 percent. Capitalizing on this success, Kaspersky Lab extended Lena’s capabilities into its online retail function, where she will assist customers with product selection.

“In just a few months, Lena has exceeded our sales support expectations,” said Michael Neumeyer, director of online operations of Kaspersky Lab Europe. “Lena’s ability to provide personalized assistance in the product selection and purchasing process has resulted in an 80 percent sales support success rate.”

Expanding Lena into Kaspersky Lab’s sales operations enables her to provide a broader scope of services to customers. By deploying her across sales and support and integrating her with the existing customer database, Lena can identify each client’s individual needs based on their profile. Using this information, she can also offer customized technical support and solutions throughout the ordering and payment process, resulting in an engaging, fast, and successful interaction that improves customer loyalty, satisfaction and sales.

Lena’s expansion corresponds with recent research stating that “The traditional view of customer service is blurring into all areas of the customer life cycle. Savvy eBusiness leaders recognize the growing alignment of service, sales, marketing, and brand to engage customers in an unfractured customer conversation,” (Source: Forrester, “The Metamorphosis to Agile Customer Service,” August 23, 2011).

Kaspersky Lab has additional plans to extend Lena’s capabilities into the customer upgrade center to facilitate licensing and renewals.

About VirtuOzVirtuOz is the leader in Digital Customer Relationships, enabling large and mid-market enterprises to use Intelligent Virtual Agents to provide world-class online marketing, sales, and support channels, ensuring a high quality user experience while improving operational performance. Recognized by the American Business Awards, Best in Biz 2011 and Tech Awards Circle, the company’s award winning intelligent virtual agents offer companies a new channel for online self-service that delivers the best possible customer experience at one-tenth the cost of traditional channels. VirtuOz solutions combine best-in-class virtual agent solutions with best practices across agent development, deployment, and optimization to deliver predictable and measurable results. Intelligent virtual agents are predicted to become the new standard for customer interaction in the next few years. VirtuOz leads the market for successful use of intelligent virtual agents, having processed over 166 million conversations on behalf of its customers in 2011 and with the largest number of live enterprise intelligent virtual agents for Global 2000 companies including eBay, Michelin, SFR, H&R Block, and Symantec. More information about VirtuOz can be found at www.virtuoz.com.

About Kaspersky LabKaspersky Lab is the largest antivirus company in Europe. It delivers some of the world’s most immediate protection against IT security threats, including viruses, spyware, crimeware, hackers, phishing, and spam. The company is ranked among the world’s top four vendors of security solutions for endpoint users. Kaspersky Lab products provide superior detection rates and one of the industry’s fastest outbreak response times for home users, SMBs, large enterprises and the mobile computing environment. Kaspersky technology is also used worldwide inside the products and services of the industry’s leading IT security solution providers. Learn more at www.kaspersky.com. For the latest on antivirus, anti-spyware, anti-spam and other IT security issues and trends, visit www.securelist.com.

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VirtuOz is a trademark of VirtuOz, Inc. All other company and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.